“Entente cordiale” & all that
Speaking truth to power: 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8a, 8aFR, 8b, 8c, 8d, 8e, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15a, 16, 16a & 17
After 1066 and all that (Google Books) — let us return after ending this series on Climate Emergency (index atop), to the previous series Toward a rational view of Society beginning here — further social commentary on my Kuwaiti blog here.
Update : see Part 2 here.
Did you know that the 1776 American Revolution caused the 1789 French one, even though the French ideology formed the American one? And that Benjamin Franklin got French King Louis XVI to fund the War of Independence? That drained the French Royal coffers, caused a recession, et voilà! The powder keg blew... Double irony is that Louis didn’t do it for the Rebels but against the Brits: neither did they have the taste for a meddlesome colony draining their system — colonies were about money, begin & end of story— when all eyes were in the opposite direction… on East India! Treble irony, they couldn’t even get a British general to replace an ineffectual Duke of York — all he did was march up &down the North American east coast without engaging Rebels — they had to find a German general and his Hessian Guards to the dirty work[0]. Quadruple irony, the French saved the Rebels in the end: the blockade of Yorktown stopped Brits resupplying & thus sustaining their effort. The War of Independence was a knife edge till the end… George Washington knew full well it could’ve gone either way [1]. The United States of America almost didn’t happen.
Do they teach any of this in American, British or French schools? It’s from Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - present” (Google Books) primarily, and also from David McCullough’s “1776” (Google Books).
What I learned at a congress coincidentally over the US Bicentennial in Washinton, DC — where Kronenberg beer had a slogan: “I stormed the Bastille for Kronenberg 1664”, belted by buff lads & sexy lasses in berets, red scarves, horizontally striped tops and blue bottoms — was a striking commonality, if only by numbers: “Bastille Day” was not the heroic surge it’s remembered as, because there were only six incarcerated drunks, hobos & prostitutes… And that’s the same number of soldiers killed in the “Boston Massacre” — both occurred in these respective events — for more ‘couleur locale’, see the middle indented paragraph in my Medium post, “The yellow brick Road”, here.
All this is to say that there’s more in common between Americans and the French, than there is normally assumed to be with the Brits... For disclosure, I have lived and worked in all three countries — indeed have an American daughter — as well as in Australia, Canada and Kuwait!
One capital exception is, however, abortion. On the one hand the US Supreme Court overturned “Roe vs. Wade” in 2022 (here), which ensured women’s control over their bodies in terms of reproductive choices for 50 years. On the other hand just this week, abortion rights were enshrined in the French Constitution (here, Google Translate English here, IVG = abortion).
Nothing exemplifies more starkly the different interpretations — although sprung from same ideologies, I mean Thomas Jefferson helped pen the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme” — of the separation of Church and State. Having lived in Texas and So.Cal. — see ‘couleur locale’ above — I can assure you the two overlap a whole lot stateside, as it did throughout British history. Having grown up in SW France, I can equally assure you that there was a ‘deep Catholic state’ (my words), in contradiction to what was taught in school — which is stronger than “not being taught” as mentioned above.
Trust me, the offspring of Hungarian refugees fleeing Communism found it a tad humorous to have the high school priest — lay schooling anyone? — a card-carrying Communist! Surely the Christian doctrine has socialistic tenets, but from there to being a Communist showed they had no idea what they were about. In fact I considered it to be misdirection from paedophilia rocking the (Catholic) Church “that everyone knew about, without anyone knowing about it”[2].
Oh and what about the French Revolutionary motto? I made no friends saying that “liberté, égalité, fraternité” is an oxymoron! If you let people be free, then their varied talents will definitely lead to haves and have-nots, there goes equality. If you want to impose equality through rules and regulations, then there goes your freedom. And seeing how both competition and nanny-state affects us all in a world not prone to addressing the hurts caused by society [3], I see no fraternity anywhere. And I have yet to find anyone to correct me — I’m not proud, I can always learn something new: indeed my late fave gran quipped “learn one new thing a day, and you shall stay young”… come on, make my day! — in a populace that prides itself of being critical… and “impossible n’est pas français” needs no translation! I guess it’s an axiom no-one thinks about.
I even spent 10€ ($11, £8.5) on “Le Point- Références” magazine — not digital! — about authority: they delve into the classics listed below; they don’t say the cover features Marcus Aurelius whose “Meditations”, or ‘ notes to self’ in 12 books, are legend (here). I may not find an answer there, but let me show both zest and humility in learning to constant critics who neither check with me nor hear me out. Please find further explorations in cultural differences in my personal blog mentioned in the introduction.
What I’m getting at is that, while Delacroix expresses in the banner picture a universal desire that “we the people” prevail over authoritarianism currently spreading like wildfire, there are distinctions to be made to compare & contrast various peoples’ ways to both define themselves and portray themselves. That requires, however, a base level of knowledge — “culture générale” in French — to cogently address current affairs in general or the issues discussed here in particular.
Let’s close with an anecdote: the UK EU Referendum (Wikipedia) was 23 June 2016, yet Google Trends show that searches spiked right after that date... Does that mean that voters had no idea what they voted for?! This would extend further: then PM Theresa May changed the referendum (Wikipedia) from a “gauging” to a “mandate”; Party Whip rushed HM the late Queen to ratify it before anyone woke up and smelled the (roasted) coffee. And no-one paid attention as media were succesfully guided to, say, leadership challenges across parties that such rough waters will engender. In France they’d been up in arms, literally, as in May 68 I attended as a pre-teen or Gillets Jaune (Wikipedia) I didn’t, altho Bonnets Jaune did stop me in traffic a few times (a farms & fisheries derivative from those wearing toques working outside).
Let’s close with a suite of expressions where English and French are transposed: French exit is filer à l’anglaise, French letter is capote anglaise and French horn is cor anglais. Do you know of other such expressions?
0: the Brits have a long history with, say, Queen Elizabeth I hiring pirateers to harass the Spanish Armada for profit in addition to the Royal Navy
1: a similar situation was D-day, where Gen. Eisenhower had two speeches — one in each breast pocket… the joke goes that’s why military uniforms always have two breast pockets! — one for victory and one for defeat.
2: I knew, for example, the very house (now demolished) that priests had their fun with boys… about 500 m. from home! I was also a fortunate son of an ‘out’ family, when ‘in’ families fought “to serve up their sons as choir boys”, as the Chinese whispers went... All this was over 50 years ago, thank God! Last but not least, I spent a language summer in Traunstein, Bavaria: what I did know was that it was a Nazi ‘new town’; what I didn’t know was that then local Bishop Ratzinger, would later on sign off as Pope Benedict on paedophile clerics shuttled around to avoid detection… Isn’t it ironic, moreover, that he also headed Opus Dei, the XX c. Inquisition?!
3: for a brief go straight to “Society” here, and for my intro to rc.org go here
